Union members spared Minister of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour any discomfort on Tuesday when he addressed a range of issues at a community imbizo (meeting) in Mitchells Plain.
Prisons and Police Civil Rights Union (Popcru) members, who are currently embroiled in a public spat with Balfour about overtime, disciplinary action and understaffing, were conspicuous by their reticence to pose any questions.
”We don’t want to speak, we would be guillotined back at work,” said a Popcru member, also alerting the South African Press Association to an SMS circulated that stated: ”Whatever you do, don’t put up your hand.”
During the question-and-answer session, Balfour and Deputy Minister of Correctional Services Cheryl Gillwald spoke on a number of issues raised, including prison corruption, nepotism and perceived human rights abuses committed by the department’s emergency support teams.
Asked when correctional services will be represented at local-level community police forums, Balfour said this is an issue that has been worrying him for some time.
”We need to move the focus away from just police … we need community safety forums,” he said, referring to a multisectoral approach to safety and security.
Balfour said the department needs to try to ”suck in” the volunteers currently working in the system, as well as recruit much-needed professionals, such as psychologists and social workers, to work in prisons.
He pleaded for closer cooperation between inmates and correctional services staff, saying it is unfair that inmates target staff as frustrations boil over because of the judicial system as a whole.
Referring to a recent attack by an inmate on two nurses at the Baviaanspoort facility, Balfour described the assault as ”very bad, evil”.
He also took a hard-line approach to the killers of a correctional services official, shot dead while accompanying a prisoner to the Groote Schuur hospital, saying he hopes the law will deal with the suspects.
Balfour mentioned overcrowding and the need for people who are not a risk to society to be released.
”Where people are not a risk to society, they ought to be out of prison.”
He said during his tenure as minister, staff and inmates of prisons throughout the country will be his passion, and referred to a song sung by the Pollsmoor choir at the imbizo, Ayikho Indlela (There Is No Other Way), to reinforce his message of uniting and working together.
Gillwald said it is difficult to address the problems of human rights abuses or corruption in the absence of signed letters from concerned members of the public.
She said the department is considering concepts such as ”open prisons” and periodic imprisonment as part of a policy towards alternative sentencing for offenders. — Sapa